


Long Vegas Nights

by canned_peaches



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Angst, Angst and Fluff, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Comfort/Angst, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, From their times in Vegas, Light Angst, M/M, Young Boris and Young Theodore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-27 05:06:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21386575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canned_peaches/pseuds/canned_peaches
Summary: it's fluffy and very lightly angsty internal dialogue from theodore's pov about the nights him and boris spent in vegas.
Relationships: Theodore Decker & Boris Pavlikovsky, Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky
Comments: 5
Kudos: 63





	Long Vegas Nights

The things we did at night didn’t count. Count for what, I’m not sure. But those things couldn’t count, because that would mean I’m someone that I’m not yet ready to be. But, it was the only way I felt safe in this dust storm of a life. 

Maybe these things wouldn’t have occurred without my nightmares: terrors of grey dust, of fiery hair flashing before my eyes and burned skin, dreams of green doorbells and wrinkles. Yet maybe it was always destined to happen, whether with Boris or another. Another…. I can’t bring myself to say it, even now, but I will if only for clarification…. another  _ man _ . I still don’t know if I was just desperate, my mind obscured by yellow birds, or if it was love at its purest. Real love is always humble, right? Wasn’t what we did humble? But I’m not ready to say it was love, maybe I never will be. 

Yes, Boris was Boris. He drank vodka from the bottle. Held my head underwater by the hair. Spoke Slavic languages while high. Had unexplained bruises in blues and yellows. That was daytime Boris, Boris when awake. But at night, Borya. Боря. I will write his name in Cyrillic because if I write it in the Latin alphabet it is not pure. When we were too tired and nauseous to get up and make ourselves go to the bathroom and puke in the toilet, and instead he would sidle up behind me without words--they weren’t needed--wrap his arms around my torso, because he knew very well that I was alone and terrified and, I’m sure, so was he. Maybe he did it for me because he knew I was haunted by thoughts of my mother and memories of soot shooting up. But perhaps we both felt this way and, for some reason, I comforted him the way he did me. Two jagged pieces of a puzzle that together make a complete picture. 

But, puzzles always get taken apart once they’re finished. It takes ages to construct them, minutes to admire the result, and seconds to destroy them. 

Were those few moments of euphoria worth the remorse now? Did I need that so badly in my life that it was worth ruining the rest? Worse, what would I do now if I could go back?

When he laid with his belly against my back, it wasn’t the physical sensation that made my past fade from my eyes. If it was only physical I could just walk down the street and take the most malnourished prostitute I found. But when he pressed against me, terribly thin body yet grounding as a weighted blanket, his mind slipped into my own and denied the negative thoughts and pushed the comforting ones in.

_ “Shhh, Potter. Only dreams.” _

The nights were broken, fragments of shattered sleep and terrors. In the cracks of wakefulness, though, there was coaxing from him. I think he got the same comfort I got from him by being the one to make me feel better, that it made him feel he could do something with his life that was as organized as a tangle of yarn. When I would gasp for breath and sit up and be unable to take the tension out of my face and arms because I was still falling, it was he, Боря, who with weathered yet nimble hands began by caressing my face softly, then added pressure as he massaged my scalp and sinus area, made my headache fade with his thumbs rubbing circles on my temples. Then he would pinch out the knots in my neck. Only two or three times--times when the night seemed exceptionally drawn out and the fragments of wakefulness blended into each other like paint dripping vertically on a canvas then mixing at the bottom--did he press his face to my neck: for a kiss, to smell me and for me to smell him, or sometimes merely to rest his face so close to mine. These nights, though always the most terrifying, were also made up for by the love that Боря directed at me in larger volumes than was typical.

_ “Фёдор.” _ He only used my name when he knew I was sinking.  _ “Фёдор, please, need to relax.” _

Though the days felt like light-years, the nights--thankfully and which I embraced, if only for me to see Боря (Bor _ ya _ , opposed to Bor _ is _ ), though I knew not what horrors would appear in my dreams--felt longer. A stream of consciousness, one consciousness between us two, fading in and out through the course of the night. The best nights were ironic. They were the best because it was when he and I were in each others’ presence the longest and most lucidly. But they were also the worst because there were horrors more intense than the normal that kept us from sleeping. These nights. We had to brace ourselves for a long night, get comfortable because it would be a long time until the sun came up. He found a position for him to gaze out the window so he could just hardly see the mountains, black in their silhouette. His hair smashed against the wall like an inkblot against piss-yellow drywall. I laid on him, my head in his lap. I say these nights were the best because he played with my hair the whole night long due to sleeplessness. Did he play with my hair out of boredom? Perhaps. Affection, possibly. It never mattered though, all that mattered was the ghastly hand drifting through my medium locks, brushing my forehead on occasion and caressing that tender spot behind my ear with the gentleness of a fawn. All night long, myself sometimes drifting in and out of sleep, and sometimes just lying with my eyes closed so he would keep doing this.

This was Боря. Bor _ ya _ . Not Boris. The sky would turn navy to indigo, violet to magenta, amber to yellow, and yellow to that horrid oversaturated blue, the blue that would endlessly create mirages with the sand. And in the light, as supernatural creatures do, he would retreat, to the kitchen, to get a morning cup of black coffee, splashed with whiskey. And when I followed him, Боря was lost.

It was Boris again.

**Author's Note:**

> i don't like this title so give me some other recs if you want :) please leave feedback ^.^


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